The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the inventors hereof, to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted to be prior art against the present disclosure.
Network data devices, such as switching devices, use packet processing instruction tables (e.g., forwarding tables) to define the different types of actions that may need to be performed on network packets processed through the device. In previously-known network devices, the packet processing instruction tables are configured when the network device is started, based on “profiles” that define the actions that may be required. Different packet processing instruction tables according to different profiles consume different amounts of memory, and the necessary memory is allocated when the network device is started. In some previously-known network devices, if, during operation, one or more profiles had to be changed, or one or more new profiles had to be added, the network device had to be stopped, and then restarted with a new set of profiles, causing network performance degradation.